Adventures in Messaging: Recent Episodes
Emma Strattin
Product marketing leaders share their hard-won insights into the wild and wonderful world of messaging with host Emma Stratton (Founder of positioning and messaging consultancy, Punchy). They discuss the craft of great messaging, offer advice and wisdom to up-and-coming product marketers, and dispel some myths along the way.
It feels like every startup wants to create a new category.
Category creation has become the holy grail — but it’s not the only way to win.
Differentiating your company within an emerging category can be just as powerful.
(And it’s not all on you to explain what your new category means.)
In the final episode of Season 2, Jason Gatoff, VP of Product Marketing at Pendo, shares a ton of great advice, including:
--- Why colleagues and key stakeholders should be part of your messaging journey
--- How to level up your messaging by collaborating with your content and brand teams
--- Why you should never call your company a leader (leave that to the analysts and review sites)
Sometimes product marketers have to launch a little early. Sometimes they have to launch a LOT early 🙂
So how do you create a positioning and messaging strategy for a product that isn’t fully formed or completely understood? When you haven’t got end-to-end use cases or customer feedback?
You go back to basics and draw from what you already know.
In this episode, Jiong Liu, Director of Product Marketing, Customer Identity at Okta, talks through an awesome example of how she did just that. Including:
--- Having a ton of conversations with customers to understand their vision for the future, their roadmaps, and the possibilities for the product.
--- Pairing the vision back to real-world, ready-to-go use cases.
--- Deeply understanding the needs of the user and buyer personas involved.
Not enough people talk about using your intuition during messaging development. Because it’s a total secret weapon.
The best product marketing teams have a gut sense about which messages will land with their customers, resulting in stronger hypotheses and faster messaging development cycles.
And you can learn how to build your messaging intuition too.
In this episode of Adventures in Messaging, Jordan Greene, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Outreach, shares how his team nurtures their intuition every week, including:
--- Having frequent interactions with buyers and ideal prospects (even if it’s a quick coffee or 10 min chat).
--- Passively listening to sales call recordings at scale (one of his colleagues listened to 10,000 in one year!).
--- Sandwiching quantitative data between qualitative feedback to test and validate.
This plus what it’s like creating and building a new category, what it means to be “customer obsessed”, and how knowing your customer is embodied into the daily, weekly, and monthly rituals of the team.
How do you bridge the gap between your product today and the vision for tomorrow?
Pretty much every high-growth startup faces this messaging challenge: striking the balance between “what is” vs “what could be.”
Luckily, awesome marketing leaders like April Rassa, VP of Product Marketing at HackerOne, have been there, done it, and developed a simple framework for it.
In this episode of Adventures in Messaging, we dig into April’s approach, the real-life experience that inspired it, some practical pointers on how to pull it off, and more. Including:
--- How to create messaging for a product that isn’t quuuite ready for the marketplace yet 🤪
--- Why there’s opportunity in chaos
In so many ways, messaging doesn’t belong to your company.
It belongs to your customer. Your buyer.
And the companies who get closest to the customer — and use their insights and language to help guide messaging strategy — are the ones who win.
In this episode of Adventures in Messaging, the awesome Jarod Greene, VP Product Marketing at Highspot, discusses this outside-in approach to messaging and positioning, and some of the ways his team brings the voice of the customer in. Including:
--- Getting real about actual win themes and customer value (and never assuming it was just that awesome feature that did it)
--- Listening to your customer’s actual language (and not imposing your own internal spin on it)
--- Making interviews with lost prospects and surveys with ICPs a part of your process
When writing messaging, the natural reflex is to start with what’s so great about your product. (Especially when you know how amazing it is.)
The trick is to consciously step back and start with the bigger picture.
Why does your product matter to your audience? Why should they even care?
Answer these first, then you can get into what they’ll experience and the outcomes.
In this episode of Adventures In Messaging, Jack Wei, Senior Director Product Marketing at SmartRecruiters, gives great advice on how to crystallize your messaging, including:
--- How to get out of the weeds (and your own head!) when writing messaging
--- The importance of feedback throughout the process
--- Why sometimes you need to walk away from your draft and give it a few days
The secret to messaging that resonates? Start with empathy, not features.
Before you put pen to paper, make sure you truly understand your customer’s challenges, aspirations and feelings.
That’s how you find the emotive hook to bring people into your story.
In this episode of Adventures In Messaging, Christine Sotelo-Dag, Group PMM at Intercom, gives amazing advice on how to root messaging in empathy, including:
--- Connecting the dots between the pains both customers and prospects are experiencing
--- Clarifying the problems that your solution solves for them
--- Constantly checking that you’re using customer language, not internal vernacular
Personally, I’m a huge fan of Intercom’s messaging and Christine’s team’s work — so I love getting this behind-the-scenes look at how they do things.
A CEO once told me he stayed awake at night wondering how many ideal prospects visited his site, struggled to understand what his company could do for them, and bounced for good...never to return.
As marketers, we can all relate to that fear: is our messaging actually grabbing people? 😱
So what can you do to stress test your messaging? To get some feedback and fine-tune? To give you back that good night’s sleep? 😉
On this episode, the one and only Peep Laja takes us through his philosophy on messaging and copy testing, including:
--- Aiming for excitement (and not boring buyers to death)
--- Being specific and clear above all else
--- Finding the balance between too little copy and too much
--- Avoiding subjectivity
--- Honing hierarchy and story structure
This may sound like heresy, but there are times when speaking to high-level business value isn’t necessarily the best way to go.
Like when your buyer isn’t responsible for those top-level business metrics.
Or when messages like “reduce costs” or “increase revenue” are a dime a dozen in your space.
In this episode of Adventures in Messaging, Jeff Beckham, Head of Product Marketing at Mixpanel, shares advice on how to message your product’s true differentiation, including:
--- How use cases can help your product stand out in crowded markets
--- Hitting the sweet spot between features and business value in your messaging
--- When to break the “never use acronyms” rule
I love Jeff’s strong opinions on messaging, including several marketing phrases that simply need to go.
Product Marketers face the challenge of finding the perfect balance for their messaging, identifying which details illuminate the message and which ones just create extra noise.
Caroline Walthall, Head of Product Marketing at Quizlet, has a few methods for narrowing it down.
In this episode, she’ll share the platforms she uses for effective message testing and detailed customer research.
She’ll also share advice she’d tell her younger self when it comes to adapting a test-and-learn mindset.
When it comes to category creation, success lies in intimately knowing your product and the market, and then getting creative with that knowledge.
In this episode of Adventures in Messaging, Derek Frome, Head of Marketing at Ouster, will get into detail about the category creation process he’s used in his past few roles, including his current company which just went public.
He’ll also touch upon where to test your messaging, how to identify good versus bad feedback, and how to enable sales in a technical space that doesn’t follow the traditional top-down sale.
Finding your product’s unique space in the marketplace is everything.
That’s why positioning and category definition are two of the most important (and juiciest!) things a product marketer can do.
And if you want to do it right, you gotta start with your customers.
In this episode of Adventures in Messaging, Jason Perocho, VP of Product Marketing at Braze, shares how customer insight helped define a product category during his time at Salesforce, including:
--- Testing their initial hypothesis about the category (and learning it was off).
--- Investigating exactly how customers were using popular features.
--- Understanding how customers perceived the product and its value
It’s rare to get a behind-the-scenes tale of category creation – Jason packs a ton of practical wisdom into this clip. If category definition is on your mind, then this episode is for you!
Research does more than just inform product positioning and messaging — it helps build conviction around how to move forward as a company.
The key is to ask specific and nuanced questions; listen to what the research is telling you; and pivot accordingly.
In this episode, Kevin Garcia, Head of Product Marketing at Retool, offers awesome advice on how to approach research with an open mind and rigorous practices like:
--- How to define the scope of your research based on time, goals and priorities.
--- Why you should always connect research findings to business value.
--- And a simple weekly habit to build your customer intuition over time.
Kevin’s background in Cognitive Science gives him a wonderfully scientific — yet simple — approach to tackling research, and you’ll want to hear what he has to say.
“Your job communicating isn’t done until you’ve been understood.”
Words. To. Live. By. 🙌
Just because you’ve put a message out there to your team — on a deck, a doc, an email — doesn’t mean you’ve effectively communicated the idea.
You have to consider different communication needs, different audiences, and different contexts.
That’s how Andrew Stinger, Corporate & Product Marketing Lead at Coda, approaches internal and external messaging.
It's not a one-and-done thing, but an ongoing process of feedback, iteration and refinement.
In this episode, Andrew shares amazing stories from his time at Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Coda about:
--- How even a smart headline can falter without the right context
--- Why every new message is a test, from a sales conversation to a blog post
--- Why getting bored of hearing your message is a good thing
Andrew’s pure joy and passion for product marketing shines through this interview (and there’s even a cameo from his dog, Trousers 😊).
Messaging should be like an API inside your company – a living, breathing narrative that any team or region can plug into and get what they need.
That’s how messaging becomes a multiplier inside an organization.
Indy Sen, VP Product Marketing at Matterport, is full of clever messaging analogies like this one. (You’ll definitely want to borrow a few.)
In this episode, Indy shares stories from his time at companies like Salesforce, Google and Mulesoft, including:
--- How simple, fresh messaging can come straight from your customer’s mouth.
--- How to nail down your positioning with a classic template.
--- Why you should balance “learning and earning” in your product marketing career journey.
There’s even a lesson in product narratives from the movie ‘Godzilla vs Kong.’
So much goes into creating new positioning and messaging.
You have to decide who you want to be as a company. You have to get alignment across different teams. You have to understand what your customers think.
Then you have to find the right words to bring it all together!
In this episode Mary Sheehan, Head of Product Marketing at Adobe Ad Cloud, breaks down her process for creating a new messaging strategy, including:
-- Surveying internal stakeholders (and creating lovely word clouds).
-- Developing a messaging house and positioning statement.
-- Creating website and ad mock-ups to test messaging with customers.
This and much, much more :)
It’s one thing to get asked to position and message a small new feature.
But what do you do when the CRO asks you to lead the charge on new positioning, messaging and competitive differentiation for the entire company? In your first few months on the job?
First, you jump up and down with excitement. (Because this is a product marketer’s dream, right?)
Second, you get out there and research (like you’ve never researched before) and bust your ass for weeks on end to get it right.
In this episode, JD Prater, Global Head of Product Marketing at AWS Activate, tells the story of his meatiest messaging initiative during his time at Quora.
Spoiler alert: There were thrills, breakthroughs and head nods :)
At what stage of product development should product marketing be brought in?
When should you start creating and testing messaging for a new product?
Savita Kini, Director of Product Marketing at Speech A, Cisco, has worked in engineering and marketing at companies of all shapes and sizes.
And she believes both sides should begin the product innovation journey together.
In this episode, Savita explains why having marketing’s influence from the get go makes for the creation of a better product.
The best messaging gets into your buyer’s head. It connects the dots between their world and your product.
Personas can help you get there. But not if you retrofit them into your own product narrative.
In this episode, Daniel Palay, Head of Product Marketing at SignEasy, talks about how your narrative should fit into what your customer is thinking about
He discusses infiltrating your buyer’s thoughts (“The Inception Moment”), triggering their sense of ambition or self-preservation, and crafting a narrative that truly matters to them.
Great tips on how to have more relevant, important conversations with your customer.
With spells at WhatsApp, Slack, Instagram and Facebook, Judy Abad’s resume reads like an iPhone home screen. 😉
She knows what serious demand feels like — the twists, the turns, the thrills — and it’s given her a unique perspective on taking popular products with clearly-defined users to a wider global audience in a short amount of time.
In this episode, Judy talks about how to broaden your message to go enterprise and expand into new verticals, regions and audiences.
I love how her experience at the biggest names in global tech is still incredibly relevant for startups of all shapes and sizes, and you will too.
Every product launch has to land. The stakes are high for product marketers and the pressure is real.
That’s when you REALLY want messaging research in your corner saying: “We prepared for this. We got this!”
Because without understanding exactly how customers are using your product, how it fits into their day, and the true value it offers, your messaging could fall flat.
The awesome Jeffrey Vocell, Director of Product Marketing at Iterable, has seen his fair share of launches in 11 years as a PMM. In this episode, he shares his approach on how to nail every one, as well as some, plus his approach to creating better personas.
Subjectivity bleeds into a lot of messaging development.
“I don’t like this word.”
“I think we should say this instead.”
“What about ‘accelerate growth’?”
Opinions are everywhere. And while they’re valuable, they can also derail the process that leads to GOOD messaging.
It’s a challenge that Sarah Din, VP of Product Marketing at Unbabel, knows well.
Here, Sarah offers awesome, detailed advice on how to navigate subjectivity and get buy-in by rooting your strategy in research and testing.
This and so much more PMM gold in this episode.
Think of messaging as draft and hypothesis. Something to stress test and poke holes in. Something to iterate and add rigor to.
Not something to just fall in love with inside the building.
“It's a discipline. It’s not ad hoc. It's not a fire drill. And so if you build it like a machine, you will get the benefits of it.”
Jon Rooney is a veteran product marketer in enterprise software (Microsoft, Splunk, New Relic) and the newly minted GVP, Industry Marketing, at Oracle.
In this episode, Jon shares the “four gauntlets” he runs messaging through to create something truly great.
Tons of awesome practical advice in this one from a man who’s been there, done it, and keeps on doing it. And he's smart and hilarious, too.
Creating a cohesive, overarching story for a product with different audiences and use cases can be tough.
It’s a challenge that many product marketers face. But there’s always an answer...and it often lies in your customer's mind.
In this episode, Michael Peach, Head of Product Marketing at Tray.io, shares an AWESOME anecdote about how listening to a customer brought a moment of epiphany.
One that changed his company's whole product marketing strategy, tied their higher-level message together, and helped them attract bigger customers.
A must watch for anyone who loves to hear about a good ol’ marketing breakthrough story. 🙌
Plus tons more great advice on how to craft great messaging.
It’s easy to think you know how to talk to your customer.
But are you using the same words they use? Are you highlighting the same problems they discuss? Are you truly empathizing with their situation?
The words you use have the power to build up or belittle your customer.
To show you understand them or not. To earn their trust or not.
That’s why you should always approach messaging from a place of learning.
In this episode, Diana Smith, Director of Brand & Product Marketing at Twilio.org talks about the importance of elevating your customer in the story – and why self-awareness is key to finding the right message.
Diana’s perspective on the nonprofit sector is incredibly relevant to all tech companies.
She also shares great advice around building your messaging framework, and a couple of phrases that we should all vow to never use again!
It’s easy to play it safe with messaging and say what everyone else is saying. (LOTS of companies do it.)
But safe messaging gets ignored.
If you want to grab people’s attention, your messaging needs to go out on a limb and say something different.
In this episode, Steve Feyer, Director of Product Marketing at Eightfold.ai, discusses why messaging needs to excite your buyers and make them think. That’s the key to meaningful messaging.
Steve inspires marketers to be bold (even a tad controversial!) to help their products stand out in noisy, crowded markets.
You’d think a solid ROI calculator could convince people to buy.
But most purchases aren’t based on rational facts and figures – they’re based on how your prospect feels.
That’s why pathos – evoking emotions in your audience – is a key part of messaging. Your buyer’s emotions drive the discussions and urgency during sales cycles.
In this episode of Adventures In Messaging, Ajit Ghuman, Head of Product Marketing at Narvar, talks about the emotional side of messaging and how to strike a chord with your customer, as well as the power of developing a holistic, cross-company view as a product marketer.
There are many things to learn about messaging: value props, product pillars, proof points, etc.
But the secret to great messaging isn’t in a framework. It’s about keeping it real and simple for your customers.
In this episode of Adventures In Messaging, Kristen Ribero, Head of Brand & Corporate Marketing at Handshake, gives practical tips on how to create simpler messaging, from avoiding fancy words to tapping into your customer’s language.
She also shares why every team – not just the PMMs – should own the company messaging, and some incredible career advice.
Talking to your customers about their challenges – and diving deep into how they make them feel – is an incredible way to test your messaging.
The key is to be subtle about the testing part.
In this episode of Adventures In Messaging, Sarah Lambert, Director, HCM Product Marketing at Oracle, shares how user groups can be an amazing resource for messaging feedback. Plus, three other ways to create a solid research mix to inform your new messaging.
Sarah also gives amazing advice to up-and-coming PMMs on how to reframe messaging feedback, so it doesn’t feel personal.
Great product narratives are never about the product. They're always about the audience.
How the product makes them feel. How it makes them act and react. How their lives will be improved, thanks to your solution.
These are the real reasons people buy.
In this episode of Adventures In Messaging with Francisco M. T. Bram, Head of Global Product Marketing at Uber, he explains how to make your product truly meaningful to your audience.
(And it’s definitely NOT about focusing on features, superior technology, and your company’s innovation.)
Francisco also shares his perfect product story arc (with a shout-out to the three little pigs and big bad wolf).